Samsung Galaxy S9: A familiar first look

960 frames per second is the kind of slow motion that captures a bursting water balloon peeling away from a balloon-shaped orb of water. I thought it might be fast enough to capture a bubble bursting. Which is how I ended up with a half dozen Samsung PR people assisting me as I tried to capture a soap-bubble burst with the Samsung Galaxy S9’s remarkable new 960 fps super-slow-motion mode camera capabilities.

If the new Samsung Galaxy S9 and S9+ smartphones, which Samsung officially unveiled on Sunday at Mobile World Congress in Barcelona, Spain are the steak, then features like 960 fps capture are surely the sizzle.

Upon initial inspection during a private-hands-on demo experience last week, the Samsung Galaxy S9 and S9+ don’t have a lot of sizzle. They’re clearly gorgeous, expertly designed 5.8 and 6.2-inch handsets, respectively, but hew very closely to the winning designs of their predecessors, the Samsung Galaxy S8 and S8+. There’s the virtually identical infinity display (a little brighter, but same resolution), and there’s the nearly all-glass chassis with a fine metal frame sandwiched between the glossy Gorilla Glass panes. There’s the USB-C and, yes, 3.5 mm headphone ports…